


a laugh

by renlyne



Series: apparently I write gryles drabbles now [7]
Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: (of a sort), Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 08:52:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13784004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renlyne/pseuds/renlyne
Summary: Harry doesn’t lose control.





	a laugh

**Author's Note:**

> For Jx, who always takes the time to improve my writing by orders of magnitude, and who makes the sorts of suggestions at 1am that I stg become the best lines of the whole fic

  
  


Sex isn’t usually like this. 

It’s fun, usually. Something he does because it feels good, because people are up for it, because he likes to laugh and catch someone’s eye and feel that rush of ego when he smiles purposefully and their eyes darken. Likes to watch as they let go and shudder apart underneath him.

It makes him feel in control, like he knows what he’s doing, knows the script and knows his lines and knows how to have fun. Obviously there are times when it’s awkward, for whatever reason, or he’s suddenly fumbing when he seconds before he’d felt smooth, but it’s still usually just a bit of a laugh.

It means something more, sometimes, when it’s with someone he cares about. There’s a feeling of connection, maybe a bit more breathlessness in his laughter, a bit more substance behind his eye contact, a bit more feeling mingling with the satisfaction in his chest as he watches their face as they come. It matters to him, that it’s Camille’s hand he’s grasping, or was Kendall’s eyes he was meeting, or was Caroline’s hand running through his hair, back in the day.

It’s not usually like this, though.

It’s never like this.

Harry doesn’t even know how they got here, kisses that taste like fire and a room that won’t come into focus. Nothing either of them have done so far should’ve warranted this.

But Harry feels raw. Feels flayed open, just as he always does when he’s here. Like he can’t catch his breath, eyes so wide they’re unseeing, body writhing and wrists pinned above his head, absolutely fucking out of control. Out of his mind with it.

Harry doesn’t lose control. He lets loose, obviously, knows how to have a good time with the best of them, knows how to have too many drinks and is almost embarrassingly good at appearing sober in pictures literally seconds after yelling and dancing and singing in the street. But even if it’s just in the back of his mind, he’s always in control, always has a firm handle on that line he won’t cross. 

It’s gone right now. Two half-empty glasses of whiskey on the nightstand and breathless kisses bitten into his shoulder and strong fingers suddenly digging into his thighs, and he's so completely fucking gone for it he can't think straight.

Harry doesn’t lose control, trained himself out of that somewhere between his second press tour and accepting his award for Villain of the Year. A smirk is a weapon, if you know how to use it. A defence, even if you don’t.

Maybe that’s the problem though. That they’ve been doing this since before he’d mastered the coy twitched-lip smile and guarded eyes. That the first time Harry had crawled into bed with him he’d been too young and inexperienced to understand the art of self-preservation.

Or it could have been the sheets, maybe. That they still smelled the same. Different flat, but the same washing powder, the same traces of the same cologne, the same hair products leaving the same scent on the pillows. Sense memory, or something.

Doesn’t matter in the end, whatever it is. 

Doesn’t matter if it’s the span of years, or the smell Harry’s brain labels as home when he’s out of it enough to allow it to. (Doesn’t matter if it’s something else entirely, some feeling that spreads through his chest and down through his fingers every time they finally see each other after Harry’s been away for too long. Some unacknowledged truth that this is the person he always laughs the loudest and longest with, trusts implicitly with any and all of his secrets. Maybe it is that feeling that he refuses to name, that truth that he refuses to think, but it doesn’t matter anyways. Because he occasionally wishes he were different, that he wanted the things that the other boys did, craved roots and stability and someone to come home to. That that sounded appealing instead of like a cage. But he isn’t, and it doesn’t.)

Doesn’t matter what it is, because he isn’t going to change any of it. Not a single thing. He’s going to keep falling into this for as long as he can — this bed, this feeling, the way he’s gasping and involuntary arching off the mattress and is so far from _having a laugh_ that what they’re doing right now almost shouldn’t fall under the same label — and he isn’t going to think about how one day he may not be able to. 

Because Harry doesn’t lose control. Isn’t going to upend his whole life on a whim. Isn’t the type of person to write ballads without at least three layers of sterilization. He’ll put a girl’s name in a song, but only because they’ve laughed and fucked around a few times and she’s fantastic, and he can sing that _she’s all he thinks about_ while knowing that if he never saw her again he’d be absolutely fine.

Harry doesn’t lose control, he reminds himself afterwards, as the two of them lounge around naked for ages. They put on the telly and laugh uproariously about nothing, and Harry fills him in on the gossip from LA, spends far, far too long talking about a round of golf that he played, and gets only a fond laugh and an _‘astonishing that people legitimately think you’re interesting and cool’_ as punishment. They eat leftover curry in bed, and Harry feels naked in a way that a lack of clothing never prompts from him, feels warm and _known_ and nevermind just reaching his eyes, his smile stretches across his entire fucking face.

(He knows better than to write songs about this.)

The car comes for him half-way through the morning, and he gets a hug that he returns just as tightly as it’s given, tucking his face into still-damp curls one last time before he goes. He flicks his sunglasses over his eyes as he leaves, twitched-lip smile fixed firmly on his face for the cameras.

The next time he has sex it’s a bit of a laugh. She’s stunning and perfectly put together and tells him that she once stuffed eleven marshmallows into her mouth as a dare. He laughs easily, declaring that a talented mouth joke seems a bit obvious, and watches her eyes dart to his lips in response, lets his expression shift into a purposeful smirk. 

It’s fun, easy, controlled.

His eyes aren’t startled open, wild, locked in place on _his_ and wordlessly begging for so many things that his mouth never will. His chest doesn’t feel too tight, like he’s either about to explode outwards or collapse in on himself. It doesn’t feel a bit suspended from the normal rules of time and space, otherworldly, like the way he’d imagined sex before he’d had it, what it seems like in songs and books and films.

And it’s as it should be, because Harry fucking loves his life just as it is. He wants to keep it exactly as he has it, and this is the way to do that. 

He can live exactly as he wants to, because he’s been so lucky. Had so many opportunities, had so many things go right, had his life shape itself up so that he can do exactly anything and everything that he wants.

And if he wants this life just exactly as it is, then he can make that happen. 

Because that’s who he is.

Because if there’s anything that Harry has trained himself to be — constantly, consistently, groundingly — it’s fully in control.

Because Harry’s never done too well with cages, and he knows better than to clip his own wings.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Comments make this whole dreadful writing business worthwhile ♡
> 
> (alternatively, come cry with me on [tumblr](http://daretomarvel.tumblr.com/) xx)


End file.
